The Adams, SK house that Noah Draper built for Ethel Nelson in 1911 prior to their 1912 marriage. Photos courtesy of the Norma Draper Family Photograph Collection.

The Draper's house at Adam's, SK after enclosing the veranda in screens. Noah and Ethel's album says the front windows were blown out in the 1912 Regina cyclone.

In this week's letter, Noah's cousin George Draper comments that Noah probably witnessed the Storm from his place at Adams, SK. Although Ethel didn't mention it in her post card in last week's post about the June 1912: Regina's F4 Cyclone, they may have spotted something because the distance along the track from the C.N.R. station in Regina to the siding in Adams is an official distance of 13 miles (20 km).

Places/things mentioned in this letter or in the Genealogy Notes:- the storm - the 1912 Regina F4 cyclone I blogged about last week- a man engaged - the hired man

Cliches/Phrases- cuz - George signs the letter "your Cuz, Geo Draper"

Legend: * Look under the Categories/Labels in the right side column for more posts on this person/place/thing. If you don't see a label, use the search box at the top of page.** see Genealogy Notes below

Keswick Sept 15th 1912

Mr. Noah Draper Grand CouleeDear Noah. Pretty near time I answeredyour Card July 12th. was glad tohear from you My was'nt thatCyclone desperate Suppose you couldsee the Storm from your place. Itwould certainly look fierce Stewart saidHe went & saw the ruins and isgoing to send me some pictures of itI got a letter from him on the 9th Septhas all his wheat cut & oatswithout Frost or Hail pretty Lucky I hopeyou escaped the same was yourcrops pretty Good this year. It dontseem long ago. since Iwas up there with you. driveing aroundthrough the wheat. How is Aunty

2I hope She is well. is She liveingwith you or Ethel Riglerwe are not through Harvest yet Barleyto Draw yet & some Peas to cut. & DrawPretty slow In Ont, Eh. But In order to havea crack shot He has to come fromNorth Gwillimbury and show Noah how totumble the Ducks. no doubt you have said to your self many times | ifIcouldonlyshootlike | George Draper |Iwouldgiveagooddeal | But youmay learn after a long time. ofcourse I showed you quite a Bit.I am going up at the Head of the BayeTomorrow to shoot a few Doz DucksCome along Noah and I will give youanother Lesson It is raining toBeat the Devil to Day we have had aDesperate lot of Rain this Summer.Come East this Winter and we will donothing but Fish I have a Man Engagedfor the Winter & I am going to FisheveryDay Come along I know Ethelwould like to come Home guess Edith& Frank are comeing for the Winterwrite me Noah soon With kind Regards to all In your Home your Cuz GeoDraper

Genealogy Notes

On Sep 23rd, 1908 George, 28 yrs old, bachelor farmer, married Eliza Alberta Hamilton, 23 yrs old, Spinster, daughter of David Hamilton & Priscilla Stevenson. George and Eliza both reside in North Gwillimbury, and both attend the Christian church.

The 1911 census finds George and Eliza living on the Draper Homestead near Keswick in the house where he'd been born, where his father Stephen Draper had been born, and where his grandfather Joel Draper Jr had worked the crown-deeded virgin uncleared land when York County was first being settled.

1911 Canada census showing George and Eliza living on the Draper homestead along with his parents, Stephen Draper and Martha Barnhart, and his unmarried sister, Edith.

I'm not sure where George's oldest brother, Charles J, is in 1911, but he'll eventually take over the family farm while the rest of the siblings headed west, returning to Ontario to spend the winters with family and friends.

In this letter, George mentions driving through the wheat fields with Noah and although he doesn't give a date, we can surmise he's talking about the trip he took west during the summer of 1911, partly because of this clipping:

The Newmarket Era. August 18, 1911 - pg. 6

George also mentions the 1912 Regina cyclone in his letter, and how he's waiting for pictures from his brother Stewart, who's renting a farm at Indian Head, east of Regina. I don't have Stewart's photos, but if you haven't looked yet, check out last week's post for images of the ruins.

1913 finds George heading west on a business trip. Perhaps the trip was to buy land?

The Newmarket Era. October 3, 1913 - pg. 6

I only make that assumption because a mere 4 months later, George and Eliza are preparing to move to Wolfe, Saskatchewan.

The Newmarket Era. February 13, 1914

By the time the special 1916 Western Canada census rolled around, George's sister, Almeda and her husband, James Edward Baker and their 2 children, Milburn and Ruby, had joined George and Eliza on their quarter section of land at Wolfe, RM of Reford, Saskatchewan.

It isn't until 1919 where we find the first mention of a child born to George and Eliza and that's thanks again to the newspaper back in York County:

The Newmarket Era. December 12, 1919 - pg. 2

George and Eliza named their son, Ernest David and there is no record of any siblings for him. I spent hours searching for Ernest. Thanks to the Sask Genealogical Society, I found obits for an Ernest and Lillian Draper who retired from farming in the same area and moved to North Battleford. Every matched ... until I realized it couldn't be George's son because this Ernest was born in the late 1800's in Wisconsin and not 1919 in Saskatchewan. What a letdown.

George, Eliza, and Ernest show up on the 1921 Canada census and I have newspapaper clippings of them for a few years after that, but then they fall off the radar. A very brief - too brief and sketchy - description is given in the Landis Record history Book, where it shows them renting the land and moving back to Ontario until 1950, and then spending the summers at Wolfe, and the winters in York County.

There's hope though because I still have Noah's WW1 letters to post and although we know where George and Eliza are during the war, I still have several years of Ethel's diaries from the 1940-50's left to go as well as a batch of letters which I glanced at but not made notes for. Hopefully somewhere in there is a clue to their whereabouts.

Of course, if you have any information about this family - pictures would be lovely - please help us fill in the blanks:

Noah and Ethel are about to head West, but there was one event they would have attended before they left, and that was the wedding of Noah's cousin, Edith Draper, to Frank Kavanagh.

While blogging about Noah and Ethel's Courtship letters I couldn't help but notice how concerned Noah was about Edith and her siblings, his 1st cousins, the children of Stephen Draper and Martha Barnhart. If you recall, Stephen was the brother of Noah's father, David, and their 2 farms pretty much backed up to each other when Noah's family lived in North Gwillimbury.

In other posts I've detailed the lives of Stewart and George. Edith meanwhile was mentioned in these 1911 Courtship Letters:

As for the events leading up to Edith Draper marrying Frank Kavanagh, I found this humorous newspaper snippet:

The Newmarket Era. December 13, 1907

Miss Edyth Draper returned from the West a few weeks ago. She says it is too cold there for her.

I laughed when I saw that, knowing she would eventually marry and move to the West. I figured she must love Frank very much and heartened at the thought of her deep love. But then I read the next snippet and realized Frank didn't head west until 1908.

The Newmarket Era. May 15, 1908

The image at the top of this post shows what Togo, Sask looked liked in 1911.

So if Frank wasn't out West in 1907, who did 22 yr old Edith go to visit? Noah has mentioned Edith's brother, Stewart Draper, many times in the Courtship letters, and Stewart and Bertha's daughter, Norma, submitted a very detailed write-up on her family in the local history book, From Basket to Bridge - White Bear, Kyle, Matador in which she wrote that her father, Stewart Truman Draper, rented land from Eli Williamson, east of Indian Head, in 1907 prior to homesteading in the White Bear area.

Since Noah's family was already in Grand Coulee by that time, I'm guessing Edith visited her brother, Stewart, and Noah's family - her Uncle David and Aunt Sarah.

So we know that Edith was a spinster, a farmer's daughter, and that she doesn't like the West because it's too cold. And although we don't know for sure that Frank and Edith are courting, there must have been a good reason for him to be included in this 1906 family photo.

While Edith stayed in her Keswick, North Gwillimbury Township home, we can read a series of news snippets showing Frank's trips back to his family in Queensville, East Gwillimbury Township. It seems he still calls Queensville home and from the looks of these snippets, he made more trips than I could find in the Newmarket Era:

The Newmarket Era. December 24, 1909

The Newmarket Era. June 17, 1910

The Newmarket Era. September 30, 1910

Mr. W. H. Kavanagh mentioned in the middle snippet is Frank's father, William Harvey Kavanagh, b 1857, living in Queensville with an occupation as a butcher and auctioneer.

That got me wondering what Frank's occupation was way out there in Togo, Sask, so I started researching the records.

1887 Birth Record for James Franklin Kavanagh, East Gwillimbury Twp

1912 Marriage Record doesn't state an occupation

1921 Canada census states Frank is a butcher

But where was he in the 1911 census? Not only that, but Noah and Ethel refer to Frank as living in Winnipeg. Even his marriage record states he's from Winnipeg. But Winnipeg was a big city even back then and I didn't have time to browse dozens? hundreds? of pages of census records. And where did Togo fit in all this?

I spent hours searching for anything I could find about Togo and located it on a map north of the Transcontinental Railway line, just kissing the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border:

Google Map showing approximate route from Keswick, Ontario, to Winnipeg, Manitoba on the Transcontinental Railroad. From there, a person would have to take a secondary train to get to Togo, Saskatchewan.

As you can see from the map, Togo is a very long way from Keswick. I stopped researching and started cropping the snippets. But as I cropped the snippet for Frank's first trip west in 1908, I had an idea. It says Frank and Walter Kaiser went to Togo together. Could I find Walter Kaiser in the 1911 census, and if I did, would Frank still be with him? After all, 3 years had passed. I pulled up the search box and typed in Frank Kaiser. The only other info I had for him was the locations of Ontario and Togo.

Bingo! The first name that came up was a Walter Kaiser living in Togo, Sask. I pulled up the census and guess what... he was single, a lodger, and a butcher. And yep, right above him was the messy scribbled name of Frank Kavanagh. Why hadn't Frank come up in all the searches? Look for yourself:

Part of the 1911 Canada census for Togo, Saskatchewan (click to enlarge)

The top blue arrow is pointing to the messy scribbled name of Frank Kavanagh, Male, lodger, single, born Apr 1887, 26 yrs old, born in Ontario. The blue arrow in the bottom Index points to Frenk Kewenigh which is what the transcriber saw when he/she looked at Frank's name, scribbled by the census taker.

We know the wedding is coming soon because of this following snippet:

The Newmarket Era. January 5, 1912

Lila is Frank's 17-yr-old sister and my belief is that the week she spent with Edith was a planning session for Edith's wedding. Although the post-wedding news article doesn't come right out and say that Lila is Edith's bridesmaid, it does state:

"...Miss Lila Kavanaugh sister of the groom, looked charming in shell pink satin with lace and gold fringe, and carried pink roses. The groom was assisted by Mr. J. C Purdy of Keswick..."

Here's the article about the Edith Draper & Frank Kavanagh wedding. Note that the article starts by misspelling Kavanagh with an 'u' and ends without it, as it should be spelled.

The Newmarket Era. February 2, 1912

Since the wedding took place at Edith's home in Keswick, the reception took place about 8.5 miles away at the home of Frank's family in Queensville, East Gwillimbury Township.

Listed under KESWICK in The Newmarket Era. February 2, 1912

So Edith has married Frank Kavanagh who was living in Togo until the census was taken a few months prior to their marriage. The snippet says they're heading back to Frank's home in Winnipeg, yet I couldn't find them in Henderson's Winnipeg City Directory for 1911, 1912, or 1915.

The Newmarket Era. November 27, 1914

However, I found this snippet which places them in Manitoba in 1914. Winnipeg is in Manitoba, but not Togo which is just a spit away inside the Saskatchewan border. But where in Manitoba?

Again, we end a post with more questions. Feel free to jump in if you know the answers.

And now that Edith is married to Frank, there isn't anything to report on that would hold Noah and Ethel in Ontario. The next post then will be Noah guiding Ethel on her first trip to the West, and to her new home on the prairies at Adams, Saskatchewan.

Places/things mentioned in this letter:- Ravenshoe - a few miles south of Belhaven- *Huntsville- Holt- Chicken Pie Social - **Box Social

Legend: * Look under the Categories/Labels in the right side column for more posts on this person/place/thing. If you don't see a label, use the search box at the top of page.** see Genealogy Notes below

Belhaven. Ont.18 Sept. 1911

Mr N. C. Draper. Grand Coulee. Sask.

Dear Noah, - Rec'd your letterlast week and was very gladto hear once again. It certainlywas quite a letter I ratherenjoyed what you wrote from your own mind. rather than the dictators. You see I like queerpeoples letters better the ones fromthe --------- Say I had my fortunetold yesterday. Even if it was

2

Sunday. We were down to UncleHarry Barkers for dinner. andOld Mrs. Pine was there. Say youcertainly would nearly die laughingto hear her talk & tell our fortunes.They had Harvest Home servicesat Ravenshoe yesterday & thereis a chicken Pie social thereto-night. I don't expect to go to-night.Our Belhaven Choir is gettingup a box social it is to be heldFriday evening in the SundaySchool Hall. You had better comealong & get a box & enjoy yourtea.I was weighed yesterday & i havegained nearly 10 pounds since I went

to huntsville. so I guess that isproof enough that I am not verybad. "eh" getting lazier every dayI guess.I was awfully sorry to know that your grain was all frozen. It seems funny one goes to work and worksall that time & then lose nearlyall. The crops down here werenot up to much. Pa says the oatsare light in weight. (not color) ha ha.The men are cutting corn to-day.The phone is ringing in greatstyle to-night. Wish you wereon this line: and I wonder how many wishes I made this last year& they never seem to come trueThe young people are going to decoratethe hall on Wednesday evening forthis great social of ours.

4

Say there is a big wedding to-morrow(Wed) Willie Sweet. Ellie Sweet's sonis to be married to Laura Traviss ofHolt.Well have you run across any of the boys yet. Orville is with his cousin & Elgin Barker is at Phillips so we heard.Pa was talking with your Uncle Stephenlast night and he said George washaving very good luck hunting.You never told me what Percy'scall their little boy.Well I guess I must close for thistime hoping to see you sometime soon. but I hope youdont have to walk by rail.you might happen to play outbefore you got here and that wouldbe worse than ever. ha ha. Bye-Bye from Ethel Nelson.

Genealogy Notes

These events were used in the past and are still used today as fundraisers. For the box social, single ladies would decorate a box and fill it with a meal - a boxed lunch. At the Box Social, an auctioneer would hold up the decorated box and the single men would bid on it without knowing who had contributed it, nor what it contained. Sometimes, a lady would give her beau a hint so he'd buy the right one. Once all the boxes were auctioned, the men would claim their box and dinner partner and they'd enjoy a meal together.

Genealogy Note 2 - 1911 Telephones

In 1911, this is the type of telephone Ethel would use when she writes in this week's letter ... The phone is ringing in great style to-night. Wish you were on the line.

To phone out, the person would grasp the funnel shaped receiver in their left hand and place the wide part to their ear. They would then lean in with their mouth close to the speaker - broken on this old phone - and they would use their right hand to crank the handle on the right side which would making a ringing sound as it turned. It would also make a ringing sound in the headset of an operator at the local switchboard who would ask who you wished to speak to and then she would connect you by physically plugging in your line.

When your conversation was done, you would turn the crank and ring off which would signal the operator that you were finished so she could unplug your line. In reality, however, the operator had a grand old time listening in on everyone's phone call and rarely needed to hear the ringing to confirm the fact.

Genealogy Note 3 - Willie Sweet and Laura Traviss

In this week's letter, Ethel says, "Say there is a big wedding to-morrow (Wed) Willie Sweet. Ellie Sweet's son is to be married to Laura Traviss of Holt."

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Draper Family Tree has descendants named both Sweet and Traviss, but because they were distant cousins, I hadn't filled in all their historic details. I've taken several days to do that and finally have this Sweet - Traviss connection figured out...

William Sweet (1775-?) of Pitney, Somserset, England married Keziah Rogers (1781-1828) of EnglandWilliam and Keziah had 7 children between 1796 and 1818 including a William, but it's the Andrew Sweet line we're interested in. Half of the children were born in New York State, and the rest in Upper Canada (now Ontario).

William Sweet 1891 is the one Ethel mentions in her letter of Sep 15. While researching William's family, I found the 1911 census which had been taken June 1st - just three months earlier ...

1911 Canada census showing Robert Davidson family

In the above census, the red block is the Robert Davidson family whom Ethel and Noah have spoken of often since they were relatives as well as neighbors. But look below the blue line and you find 2 employees in the Davidson household:- William Sweet, 20 yrs old, Laborer- Laura Traviss, 19 yrs old, Domestic

So while William worked in the fields for Robert Davidson, Laura worked in the house as a Domestic for Lily Kellington Davidson and helped care for the children. Since both William and Laura are recorded on the census, they lived there as well. I wonder if they applied for work there because they wanted to spend time together, or if they met and fell in love while working there? In any case, William and Laura are about to be married.

Cliche/Phrasing:"Will ring off..." - reference to new telephone system where the caller must turn the handle to sound a bell that makes a ringing sound so the Operator knows the caller is finished his call

* Look under the Categories/Labels in the right side column for more posts on this person/place/thing or use the search box in the header** see Genealogy Notes below

Grand Coulee, Sask.August. 28/11

Miss E. Nelson, Belhaven, Ont.My Dearest Ethel; - Received your letter Fridayand was glad to hear youwere still able to be around. Hope this may find you aswell as this leaves me at present. Well Ethel I have not startedharvest yet I got out to thefield Sat. morning when it started to rain so had to quit and will start againTuesday if nothing hapens. George Draper is up atStewards now got a card from

him Sat. he is comeing up assoon as Steward gets throharvest (I wish it were you)for a hunt. Say do you know where all the fellows went to fromdown there? I havent sawany of them yet! Well the well diggers areaway at last but they didntget water that hole turned out to be no good but itcost me $375. to find it out. The plasters were hereand put on the first coatand will be back on Wed.to finish up. the carpentersare here now or are supposedto be. it will take about

2 weeks yet to finish it up. Well Ethel I guess Motheris going down East with methis winter but I dont thinkshe will come back as sooneh. I am expecting the machineagent out this afternoon tostart my binder have notgit it going yet. Was in Regina Sat fora piece for the binder andstayed all night & cameback yesteraday. say I willbe glad when the harvestis over I have 3 men forstooking and they cant doanything while it is wet &I dont like them laying around.

Well I hope your Uncle is betterby this time, sickness is anawful thing. There is quitea few sick around here now. Say there is over 500 menin Regina waiting for harvestsome of them have beenhere 3 weeks I guess they mustbe tired of it by this time.for I know how it goes onlyI am waiting for somethingelse. eh. & it cant come tosoon for it seems lonesomeout here now. far more sothan before last winter. Well dear I guess this isabout all for this timeso I will ring off. so Bye Bye.Write long letters to your lazylover. N.C.D xxxxxxxxxx

Genealogy Notes

In this week's letter Noah mentions that George Draper is at Steward's place. Noah is talking about his 1st cousin, Stewart Truman Draper who farms in the Indian Head area east of Regina, and Stewart's brother, George, who lives in North Gwillimbury Township - the same township where Ethel lives.

Stewart brought his immediate family west, leaving the rest of them in North Gwillimbury. When Noah says that George is now out west with Stewart, I wanted to know if George had also brought his family out west.

George Milburn Draper was born on 28 August 1880, 4 yrs after Stewart's birth, which makes George 31 yrs old at the time Noah wrote this letter.

In 1908, George married Eliza Alberta Hamilton whom I suspected was a sister of Stewart's wife, Bertha Hamilton. When I couldn't find evidence of that relationship, I went back a generation to see if the wives were cousins. I couldn't find a relationship there, either. However, I noticed that Bertha's father, Robert Hamilton, and Eliza Alberta's father, David Hamilton, were born 5 years apart in Nova Scotia. That was too much of a coincidence not to investigate.

I found an 1861 Canada West census with a Hamilton family that looked similar to the one I was seeking. At that time, Canada West was Ontario as the real west was under exploration and still run by the Hudson's Bay Company.

1861 Canada census showing George Hamilton and Jane Patchell and their 5 children, 4 of whom were born in Nova Scotia with the youngest, John (from Image 1214) being born in Canada West/Ontario.

I realized I'd found the right family when the census jived with the following information I'd already collected:

The above chart has enough compelling evidence to show me that David and Robert are brothers, that their father is George Hamilton b 1800 in Ireland, and their mother was Jane (Patchell) also born in Ireland. I'd like to add that I clicked over to the next census image/page to see if there were any other family members and there was - the youngest in the family - John Hamilton, whom I added to the above screenshot, was born in 1847, 2 yrs after David.

I now knew that Bertha and Eliza were Hamilton cousins who married two brothers, Stewart and George Draper. It also meant that I now had a whole lot more people to add to the family tree when you include all the brothers and sisters as well as 200 yrs of descendants. Plus, I can research the Irish records with the names George Hamilton and Jane Patchell.

Getting back to George and Eliza, although I couldn't find a newspaper snippet, their marriage record shows they were married 23 Sep 1908 in North Gwillimbury.

The 1911 Canada census finds the couple living next door to his parents, Stephen Draper and Martha Barnhart, and his sister Edith, all whom we've met before in the Genealogy notes of 1911 Courtship May 7.

1911 Canada Census showing Stephen Draper and his wife, Martha Barnhart, and daughter, Edith, followed by son George, and his wife, Eliza Hamilton. (The transcription only shows four names at a time)

According to this 1911 census, George and Eliza don't have any children. Although one other Ancestry.com family tree shows George and Eliza with a girl born in 1911, my search of the newspapers and records, including the 1916 census record, didn't produce any mention of live or still births until 1921 when a little one-year-old boy appears with them.

So to answer my question if George went west alone, I found these snippets. The first one mentions that George, or Geo. as they call him in short form, is leaving for the west, and the 2nd one states that Geo. Draper has left Keswick for the west.

The Newmarket Era. August 11, 1911

The Newmarket Era. August 18, 1911

Since Aug 1911 had a huge demand for harvest workers, I can only assume that the above mentioned men have gone west to find work and perhaps have a look-see around while they're there. And where else would George go but to help out his brother, Stewart.

I'm looking forward to Noah's letter where he next mentions cousin George so we can perhaps learn what he thinks of the new Canada West.